As a segue from Little Dragon, I would like to now present you with a great Saturday morning tune by Jose Gonzalez.
Yukimi Nagano's muse? or friend? or I dunno what, or how, or when they met or why...but in any case - Jose Gonzalez is top 5 on my list of amazing writers (at the moment, you never know when these things change - I use to think Bryan Adams was pretty amazing).
Also from Sweden, Jose Gonzalez has released two albums, Venner, and In Our Nature. Both are on par with each other and this is very hard to accomplish after a 1st time big success. As a matter of fact, I introduced my boyfriend to the second album first, and he liked it better than Veneer.
I love Jose so much that it is almost impossible for me to choose one song. But for the sake of keeping it "sad" and autumn-like, I will choose one of my favourites: Cycling Trivialities. This one made me cry while I was cleaning one random day years ago now - so out of nowhere heart-wrenching. He has this great vibe of insight and warmth and kindness. Like he wants to always spread love around - in every song, even the dark ones.
The version I've found includes Yukimi and is live for a telethon (not sure which cause, maybe someone can figure it out for me).
Have a great Saturday morning - until tomorrow. Enjoy
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
SadSeptemberSongs: September 3, 2010
Song of the day: Little Dragon "Twice"
I have recently been turned on to Little Dragon despite my best efforts not to take well to Yukimi Nagano. She might just bother me because I'm jealous --- which is highly likely because she's absolutely aesthetically perfect to look upon, has this stoic sense of maturity both musically and personally (from what I've seen), and has killer pipes. Oh, and did I mention that her writing style is both refreshing and soulful?
I was introduced to her accidentally while indulging in my love for Jose Gonzalez live on YouTube. She sings back-up for Gonzalez and does a pretty humble job of it too.
"Little Dragon is an electronic music band, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. It consists of Swedish-Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano (vocals, percussion) and her close high-school friends Erik Bodin (drums), Captain Källgren Crunch (bass), and Håkan Wirenstrand (keyboards)." (Wikipedia, 2010)
It's just beautiful and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
I have recently been turned on to Little Dragon despite my best efforts not to take well to Yukimi Nagano. She might just bother me because I'm jealous --- which is highly likely because she's absolutely aesthetically perfect to look upon, has this stoic sense of maturity both musically and personally (from what I've seen), and has killer pipes. Oh, and did I mention that her writing style is both refreshing and soulful?
I was introduced to her accidentally while indulging in my love for Jose Gonzalez live on YouTube. She sings back-up for Gonzalez and does a pretty humble job of it too.
"Little Dragon is an electronic music band, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. It consists of Swedish-Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano (vocals, percussion) and her close high-school friends Erik Bodin (drums), Captain Källgren Crunch (bass), and Håkan Wirenstrand (keyboards)." (Wikipedia, 2010)
It's just beautiful and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
SadSeptemberSongs: September 2, 2010
Going with the general folk-feel of the last post, I want to share with you one of my favourite Sufjan Stevens tunes.
This one is sad - the lyrics are everything in this song - Stevens is an incredibly gifted writer and his words are as epic, and as cinematic as his music.
It's called Casimir Pulaski Day, from the album Illinoise (2005)
here's a live version of the song that I love - except for the fact that it's out of sync. But maybe you can just close your eyes and appreciate the 'liveness' of it on a sound level alone.
(if you're interested, also listen to "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" and everything else by him for that matter, cause it's all THAT amazing)
This one is sad - the lyrics are everything in this song - Stevens is an incredibly gifted writer and his words are as epic, and as cinematic as his music.
It's called Casimir Pulaski Day, from the album Illinoise (2005)
here's a live version of the song that I love - except for the fact that it's out of sync. But maybe you can just close your eyes and appreciate the 'liveness' of it on a sound level alone.
(if you're interested, also listen to "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" and everything else by him for that matter, cause it's all THAT amazing)
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
SadSeptemberSongs: September 1st, 2010
I was finishing a shift at Burritoville almost two years ago when I first experienced what I thought were some of the most beautiful songs I'd ever heard . I walked into the main diningroom and began to listen to Tim Crabtree (songwriter/guitarist/vocalist) along with two musicians (cello and I think a small toy piano) about 1/4 of the way through their set. My two good friends were sitting in the corner and I went to sit with them.
Under the name Paper Beat Scissors, they began to play Flicker.
All at once the room became a church...everything was richly covered in a sacred moment of genuinely captured emotion and musical magic. I grabbed a glance at my friend - both our eyes were filled with tears that we physiologically couldn't hold back, we were so moved by this piece of music.
Tim Crabtree's music is such that it MUST be seen live at some point - even if you're already a fan. Brings it to a whole new level. I've seen him twice at Burritoville and it's absolutely inspiring. So - another Canadian to love...Paper Beat Scissors is my first official choice for September 1st, 2010.
This is Flicker - amazingly beautiful and real...such a haunted, nostalgic, heartbreak of a song. A quiet chaos.
for more info:
www.myspace.com/paperbeatscissors
Under the name Paper Beat Scissors, they began to play Flicker.
All at once the room became a church...everything was richly covered in a sacred moment of genuinely captured emotion and musical magic. I grabbed a glance at my friend - both our eyes were filled with tears that we physiologically couldn't hold back, we were so moved by this piece of music.
Tim Crabtree's music is such that it MUST be seen live at some point - even if you're already a fan. Brings it to a whole new level. I've seen him twice at Burritoville and it's absolutely inspiring. So - another Canadian to love...Paper Beat Scissors is my first official choice for September 1st, 2010.
This is Flicker - amazingly beautiful and real...such a haunted, nostalgic, heartbreak of a song. A quiet chaos.
for more info:
www.myspace.com/paperbeatscissors
ATTENTION: Sad September is nigh...
And with that said, I've decided to post one song a day to express my melancholy flair and address the beauty of a well-written sad song.
I'll take a moment to remind you that some of my choices will not be available on the internet as a link - and so you might have to search for them yourself (Grooveshark/google search/etc)
however, I will try to post a link to the song when I can.
I can't wait to start - yeah for the end of blinding sunshine.
as a sneak-peak kicker-offer, let me suggest you listen to Canadian Mike Milosh's The City
enjoy, and PLEASE let me know how they make you feel, if you like them...etc.
I'll take a moment to remind you that some of my choices will not be available on the internet as a link - and so you might have to search for them yourself (Grooveshark/google search/etc)
however, I will try to post a link to the song when I can.
I can't wait to start - yeah for the end of blinding sunshine.
as a sneak-peak kicker-offer, let me suggest you listen to Canadian Mike Milosh's The City
enjoy, and PLEASE let me know how they make you feel, if you like them...etc.
Friday, August 6, 2010
the canal.
The wind is crazy here.
and I think about things that defined where I was before
and I think about the void of what it all means.
We talked about how your surroundings might not have a thing to do with happiness.
but then "La Vie en Rose" played live outside my window last night - and I thought that I might be in Heaven.
and then I thought that there are so many things that make heaven on earth.
like wind.
or, "La Vie en Rose"
or legs wrapped around legs
rain on the roof-top
so many mantras of what will make you happy
confidence
honesty
"self-help": the most lucrative section in the bookstore.
books. good ones. Long ones that you hope will never end...
not the "self-help" kind.
I do not really have a mantra.
I am one of those who can be anywhere and happy -
that is, if I'm in the right head space.
'don't really matter where I am.'
It can be Heaven in my heart...
it can be...
and the truth about happiness is that, for me,
the hope that I might get it back - or keep it, or eventually learn to sustain it,
is what drives me.
and I think about things that defined where I was before
and I think about the void of what it all means.
We talked about how your surroundings might not have a thing to do with happiness.
but then "La Vie en Rose" played live outside my window last night - and I thought that I might be in Heaven.
and then I thought that there are so many things that make heaven on earth.
like wind.
or, "La Vie en Rose"
or legs wrapped around legs
rain on the roof-top
so many mantras of what will make you happy
confidence
honesty
"self-help": the most lucrative section in the bookstore.
books. good ones. Long ones that you hope will never end...
not the "self-help" kind.
I do not really have a mantra.
I am one of those who can be anywhere and happy -
that is, if I'm in the right head space.
'don't really matter where I am.'
It can be Heaven in my heart...
it can be...
and the truth about happiness is that, for me,
the hope that I might get it back - or keep it, or eventually learn to sustain it,
is what drives me.
Friday, April 9, 2010
What's with today, today?
There hasn't been a moment where I've felt like getting my thoughts down into a blog. Probably because the past 6 months I've confronted "the demons of my past" so to speak, and I don't like them. It's hard to look back on myself, and my formed self-image as it relates to everything I've said, and all the choices I've made in my twenties thus far. Well, it's hard up until the part where I stop being in shitty, unhealthy relationships, and stop creating drama in every aspect of my life to distract myself from the real deal.
In all honesty, it's embarrasing to reflect on...like the morning after a bender. I have replayed my genuine emotional responses to things in the past, and I've replayed the countless selection of bad choices over and over in my mind, and even though I'm alone, and even though most people might not care or even notice those choices...I'm still embarassed.
I've had a very late start of it, and I am grateful to be here now, but I still mourn the loss of many years of confidence, productivity, and health that I could have cultivated earlier. I know many people learn even later than me, and I know I'm by no means done with learning...but I can't help but feel an enormous amount of guilt for not seeing the patterns sooner...for not hearing myself screaming at me when I was 20, 21, 23, and 26 years old.
Part of my ongoing guilt stems from the massive role my parents play in my becoming. Part of it stems from this new found excitement and love that I have for what I'm trying to do in my life, and the wounds that I've given myself never fully healing...
they are always reminding me of where I've come from...and how I could have prevented them.
If I would have been 21, 23, 26 years old and writing this blog - I would be embarrased to read it now...
The more I read sociological theory, and specifically Symbolic Interaction Theory - the more I reflect on the importance other people have played in my identity. And God knows, my entire life I have been someone who wants to connect...
Maybe this is because I felt so lonely growing up...so strange and so isolated in my head and my heart. My parents did nothing but remind me of how amazing it was to be me...how absolutely special and unique I was...but it didn't take away that feeling that as special as I was, no one was like me...no one felt like me...no one thought like me...
and so I consciously, VERY consciously set out to connect with people...almost like a religious faith. I believed that it was impossible that nobody felt things the way I did, or experienced the world like me, and I was right. I waited my whole childhood to be an adult, and I don't miss my childhood like so many other people do. I wanted freedom of thought, of speech, of action --- I romanticized it so much because I wanted to see the world in the way that I imagined it. I wanted people to be my lovers, my kindred spirits...I wanted to be assured that who I was could be embraced because we are all the same.
and my conclusion up until now is that we are. I'm lucky that I wasn't born with the ability to have much anger or hate or resentment. It's not because my parents didn't have anything to do with it - and it's not to say that I don't feel these things at all...but I can't live in it, and that, I think, is just pure luck. I think it's easy to, from what I've seen in my life and my relationships.
I think it's easy to be so afraid and so alone and so unsure that you end up drowning in it.
I have said before that I'm grateful for what I have...but it's in relations to what I've been through, not just the opportunities and the luck. They play such a huge part in things, but so does my embarrasing past of following around a man that doesn't love me over and over again...ignoring my body and my disease and soaking all my insecurities in bars and drinks and smiles...distracting myself from my own passions, hiding in other people's relationships and feelings and needs...even in their music, punishing myself for being this weak person instead of changing it...and labeling myself as the victim of shitty circumstance instead of realizing that it was all my own doing from the start.
How hard is it to write these feelings down...to own the guilt of your own life...to forgive yourself so that you can love fully and be loved fully...so that your parents might really get to see you happy and healthy and maybe they will even get to see your babies...
I haven't wanted to write because I've been trying to figure out a way to let it go.
but, I think, sitting with Ben in the car on the way to Montreal one beautiful day last year, I finally started to see that you can't really let those things go.
I think it's an ongoing process of forgiving and evolving...to remember that I wasn't the person I wanted to be even a year ago, reminds me of who I am now.
There feelings of guilt and regret are actually feelings that help me make the right decisions and I guess that those things that I felt...the late night under the blankets on the phone with Chris asking him why I can't be happy...the screaming and yelling and door slamming between my bestfriend and I where I felt like my heart was exploding and the whole world would end...the day I couldn't get out of bed, lost time, and woke up with my head on my mother's lap...the moments where I pondered whether or not I would ever be able to be truly independent and alone, the countless pills I took to feel better in a relationship that just needed to end, dropping out of school time and time again, keeping all these things from the people who love me the most and want to help me the most...
I can't be without them. I have to carry them around...and I suppose that it's my own choice how much weight they put on me.
Getting back to sociology - there is this theory that our entire self-awareness comes from the interactions we have socially...and in this respect, I see that the weight is lifted and carried by the people in my life who have decided to know me for all of these things, and who love me anyway...
we do this for each other. This carrying of the burden of wounds, and history, and experience. We do it by constantly confirming to each other that we are the same, and that essentially, we get to the present moment only from the moments of the past.
anyway - there is so much more to be said. But I felt like it was time to get this all out.
In all honesty, it's embarrasing to reflect on...like the morning after a bender. I have replayed my genuine emotional responses to things in the past, and I've replayed the countless selection of bad choices over and over in my mind, and even though I'm alone, and even though most people might not care or even notice those choices...I'm still embarassed.
I've had a very late start of it, and I am grateful to be here now, but I still mourn the loss of many years of confidence, productivity, and health that I could have cultivated earlier. I know many people learn even later than me, and I know I'm by no means done with learning...but I can't help but feel an enormous amount of guilt for not seeing the patterns sooner...for not hearing myself screaming at me when I was 20, 21, 23, and 26 years old.
Part of my ongoing guilt stems from the massive role my parents play in my becoming. Part of it stems from this new found excitement and love that I have for what I'm trying to do in my life, and the wounds that I've given myself never fully healing...
they are always reminding me of where I've come from...and how I could have prevented them.
If I would have been 21, 23, 26 years old and writing this blog - I would be embarrased to read it now...
The more I read sociological theory, and specifically Symbolic Interaction Theory - the more I reflect on the importance other people have played in my identity. And God knows, my entire life I have been someone who wants to connect...
Maybe this is because I felt so lonely growing up...so strange and so isolated in my head and my heart. My parents did nothing but remind me of how amazing it was to be me...how absolutely special and unique I was...but it didn't take away that feeling that as special as I was, no one was like me...no one felt like me...no one thought like me...
and so I consciously, VERY consciously set out to connect with people...almost like a religious faith. I believed that it was impossible that nobody felt things the way I did, or experienced the world like me, and I was right. I waited my whole childhood to be an adult, and I don't miss my childhood like so many other people do. I wanted freedom of thought, of speech, of action --- I romanticized it so much because I wanted to see the world in the way that I imagined it. I wanted people to be my lovers, my kindred spirits...I wanted to be assured that who I was could be embraced because we are all the same.
and my conclusion up until now is that we are. I'm lucky that I wasn't born with the ability to have much anger or hate or resentment. It's not because my parents didn't have anything to do with it - and it's not to say that I don't feel these things at all...but I can't live in it, and that, I think, is just pure luck. I think it's easy to, from what I've seen in my life and my relationships.
I think it's easy to be so afraid and so alone and so unsure that you end up drowning in it.
I have said before that I'm grateful for what I have...but it's in relations to what I've been through, not just the opportunities and the luck. They play such a huge part in things, but so does my embarrasing past of following around a man that doesn't love me over and over again...ignoring my body and my disease and soaking all my insecurities in bars and drinks and smiles...distracting myself from my own passions, hiding in other people's relationships and feelings and needs...even in their music, punishing myself for being this weak person instead of changing it...and labeling myself as the victim of shitty circumstance instead of realizing that it was all my own doing from the start.
How hard is it to write these feelings down...to own the guilt of your own life...to forgive yourself so that you can love fully and be loved fully...so that your parents might really get to see you happy and healthy and maybe they will even get to see your babies...
I haven't wanted to write because I've been trying to figure out a way to let it go.
but, I think, sitting with Ben in the car on the way to Montreal one beautiful day last year, I finally started to see that you can't really let those things go.
I think it's an ongoing process of forgiving and evolving...to remember that I wasn't the person I wanted to be even a year ago, reminds me of who I am now.
There feelings of guilt and regret are actually feelings that help me make the right decisions and I guess that those things that I felt...the late night under the blankets on the phone with Chris asking him why I can't be happy...the screaming and yelling and door slamming between my bestfriend and I where I felt like my heart was exploding and the whole world would end...the day I couldn't get out of bed, lost time, and woke up with my head on my mother's lap...the moments where I pondered whether or not I would ever be able to be truly independent and alone, the countless pills I took to feel better in a relationship that just needed to end, dropping out of school time and time again, keeping all these things from the people who love me the most and want to help me the most...
I can't be without them. I have to carry them around...and I suppose that it's my own choice how much weight they put on me.
Getting back to sociology - there is this theory that our entire self-awareness comes from the interactions we have socially...and in this respect, I see that the weight is lifted and carried by the people in my life who have decided to know me for all of these things, and who love me anyway...
we do this for each other. This carrying of the burden of wounds, and history, and experience. We do it by constantly confirming to each other that we are the same, and that essentially, we get to the present moment only from the moments of the past.
anyway - there is so much more to be said. But I felt like it was time to get this all out.
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